Lady of Hay

by Barbara Erskine

  She could feel his eyes on her in the small dazzle of the candlelight. “Almost. Yes.” She leaned forward. “What do you mean by programmed?”

  “I allowed my brother to hypnotize me. I trusted him completely, I had no reservations. It turns out I was mistaken in doing that. He claims”—he hesitated—“he claims that he has already set me on a course from which I cannot draw back. One that involves Jo’s destruction.”

  He had taken an unused spoon between his fingers, twisting it restlessly to and fro. It snapped suddenly under the pressure and Nick stared down at it in surprise. “I’m sorry—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Ann hadn’t taken her eyes from his face. “Listen. Tell me honestly. How do you feel about Jo? Do you distrust her in any way? Do you dislike her? Resent her? Hate her?”

  “No. God in heaven. No!”

  “You say that without reservation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t think you have anything to fear.”

  “But supposing Sam has planted some idea in my head that I don’t remember? He has discovered—or tried to convince me—that I am—I was—John. He knows and I know that Jo is—was—Matilda. For God’s sake, can’t you see what’s happening? He wants me to kill her again!”

  Ann felt a whisper of cold air across her skin. She glanced at the candle flame, expecting it to flicker. “What you are suggesting, Nick, can’t happen in real life. It’s pure science fiction. If it were possible, people would have the perfect murder weapon, wouldn’t they?”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. What kind of creep is your brother anyway? Jo told us she had always liked him.”

  Nick stood up abruptly. He walked to the edge of the terrace and stood looking out into the darkness. Far away in the valley car headlights showed for a moment on the main road as two tiny silent pinpoints of light, then as the road wound out of sight they disappeared.

  “I think he is in love with Jo,” he said softly.

  “Then why would he want you to kill her, for God’s sake?”

  He shrugged. There was a long silence. “I’ve always worshipped Sam,” he said at last. “But now I realize that he hates me. I expect he always has.”

  Ann stood up. She went and stood beside him. “That’s tough.”

  “Yes.” His voice was bleak. For a moment he said nothing more, then out of the silence he said, “Please, don’t regress her anymore, Ann.”

  “If I don’t she will do it on her own, Nick, spontaneously. The need to know what happens next is too strong in her. She can’t fight it. Maybe that is something your brother has implanted in her. I don’t know. But if Jo is going to regress with this violence it is much better that it happens in reasonably controlled conditions among friends than out in the streets or somewhere on the mountainside.” She could see his face clearly in the starlight. “Are you afraid to see her as Matilda again in case it prompts you to try to hurt her?” she asked at last.

  “I suppose I am.”

  “There is no need.” She hesitated for a moment, then plunged on. “We had planned for another regression this evening. If Jo still wants to do it, Nick, I think we should. I think it’s doubly important, now that you’re here.”

  ***

  The ride through the hills was exhilarating. Matilda sat her white Arab mare, feeling the creature’s grace and speed as it danced ahead of the more solid horses of her kinsmen Adam de Porter and Lord Ferrers. In spite of the fear that lurked at the back of her mind and the need for haste as they rode down the tracks softened by spring rain and everywhere budding with new green, she felt a strange, optimistic lightness of heart.

  By the time they rode into Gloucester, though, her mood had changed. A damp white mist clung over the river, swirling up the narrow streets of the town and hiding the tower of the cathedral. The joyous spring day had been extinguished by a damp, cold evening, and her fear had returned fourfold. She and she alone must face the king and beg him to reinstate William in his favor.

  William’s fall had been sudden and unexplained. Only two days after John had left Bramber after Will’s wedding, messengers came from the royal exchequer, abruptly demanding repayment of all the money that William owed the king.

  “Christ’s bones, how does he think I can pay?” William had fumed, waving the parchment under Giles’s nose. “And why now? Why does he want the money now? He made no mention of it at the wedding! He seemed pleased to be there.”

  “Can you really owe the king so much, Father?” Giles had at last managed to take the parchment from his father’s flailing hand. “How could you let your debts mount so?” His solemn face was anxious.

  William rounded on him. “There isn’t a nobleman in the kingdom who doesn’t owe money to the king! Fees, fines, reliefs, taxes! Good God above, how could any of us pay so much? He knows he’ll get it all in the end, or if he doesn’t, his heirs will, from mine. Apart from anything else, I have had two lots of marriage relief to pay in six months—a thousand pounds each! That’s what your brothers’ wives cost me!”

  Giles was reading the parchment slowly, his anger tracing the figures methodically down the page. “It says here, Father, that you still haven’t paid any of the relief for your Honor of Limerick after Uncle Philip died. That dates back five years.”

  “Five years!” William exploded. “Some of the bastards haven’t paid for fifty years! Why does John suddenly pick on me? What about some of his precious earls?”

  “Have you displeased him at all, Father?” Giles looked up, his green eyes scanning his father’s face seriously.

  “Of course not.” William smacked the palm of his hand with the rolled parchment. His jaw was working with agitation. “God damn it, Giles”—for a moment he forgot his son’s exalted calling—“he came to Will’s wedding. He gave him rubies and emeralds for a wedding gift. Would he have done that if I had displeased him?” He strode back and forth across the floor excitedly.

  “Perhaps it is merely routine demand from the exchequer. The king may not even have realized from whom he was ordering the money.” Giles hesitated. “I suppose our mother…?”

  “Oh, yes!” William whirled around. “Your mother! She might well have something to do with it! She was antagonizing the king deliberately. I’ve seen it coming. If she’s said something else to make him angry…”

  “No, Father.” Giles’s cool voice cut across William’s outburst. “I was going to suggest you ask Mother whether the Welsh lands might not produce some of the money to pay off a little of the debt. She is renowned, in the March, you know, for her husbandry.” He smiled. “She is your best steward, Father. I don’t think sometimes you realize how hard she works.”

  William snorted. “Well, if she’s hoarding my money—”

  “Not hoarding, Father. She takes a pride in her herds and her lands. She loves the Welsh hills. I hear people speak of her with awe and respect and love.” Seeing his father’s expression, he hastily changed the subject. “I am sure you can have this demand postponed, Father, if you go to see the king again. Why not ask him directly? Take him a gift—a new book for his library is a sure way to win his favor back, you know that as well as I do. Wait on him as soon as you can.”

  William looked hopefully at his son, a little reassured by Giles’s calm words. The demand had worried him. A year earlier he would have laughed it off and stuffed the parchment away among a hundred others in his own chancery office, confident in the king’s total goodwill. Nothing obvious had happened to shake his confidence and yet there was something, an uneasy feeling gnawed at the back of his mind, a suspicion that the king was not quite as friendly as before; a hint here and there among his friends that he should tread warily. Nothing had been said; nothing done. But William had felt a sudden chill hover over him.

  Matilda was appalled when she saw the size of William’s debt. “Have you paid nothing to the king since his coronation?” She scanned the parchment and looked up from William to Giles to Will, who
was leaning by the chancery window, his arms folded, a worried frown on his face; behind them the scribe and William’s clerk sat at the high desk, their pens at the ready. Why? Why the sudden demand after all these years? She had a vision of John’s face in the chapel and she closed her eyes, trying to steady the sudden irrational wave of fear that had filled her and the thought that the demand might not be unconnected with the fact that the king had seen her hand in that of Richard de Clare.

  “We must pay something at once, William.” She beckoned her own steward, who was waiting with an armload of rolled parchments. Then she stopped. “I thought you were told originally to pay the taxes for Limerick to the Dublin exchequer. Why does Westminster suddenly want them?”

  William shrugged. His shoulders drooped a little.

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “Here.” She pulled a parchment from her steward’s hands and scrutinized it closely. “I can find about seven hundred marks. Those will be sent to the exchequer straight away. See to it,” she directed William’s steward, who bowed and began to scribble as she felt for the keys at her girdle. “It is lucky, William, that we had so good a year in the March. I was able to sell cattle and there is money in the coffers.” Giving one of the keys to her steward, she directed him to fetch the gold. “It is not safe to be so much in the king’s debt, William.” She put her hand on his arm gently. “We must pay it off.”

  William laughed. The whole episode had frightened and annoyed him, and his family’s reaction to the size of his debt had first worried and then irritated him irrationally, but now that some money was to be returned, and so easily, he felt completely happy again. “That’ll be enough for the king,” he replied, shaking off her hand. “I’ll have a word with him. I’m sure it’s all a mistake.”

  But it was not a mistake. The king had, it appeared, every intention of holding William to the repayment of his debts. He accepted the carefully chosen, exquisitely illuminated volume of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the British Kingdom and within two weeks William had received a further demand from the exchequer.

  Early the following year the next blow had fallen. William was ordered to give up his lordships of Glamorgan and Gwynllwg to one of the king’s new favorites, an adventurer named Fawkes de Breauté.

  “Christ’s bones, Moll. What will he want next?” William had ridden in desperation to consult his kinsman William, Earl Ferrers, who remained high in the king’s favor, and he had returned with vague assurances of friendship from the young man but with the same advice—pay up as much as you can and keep a low profile until the king’s displeasure was dissipated.

  “He wants money, William. You’ve got to accept the fact and we’ve got to find it.” Matilda forced herself to continue studying the embroidery before her, feeling the tightness of fear close across her chest like an iron band. “You cannot get out of it. He will not be fobbed off any longer. John is getting angry.”

  Again and again William begged and pleaded with the king to extend the time he needed to repay his debts and reinstate him in favor, but to no avail. The king remained deaf to his desperate demands to be granted further audiences and turned to new friends. It was clear that the de Braose family was to be ruined unless something or someone could be prevailed upon to change the king’s mind. So, after long and worried consultations with Giles and Will, who had arrived with Mattie and their baby son, John, diplomatically named for the king, it had been agreed that Matilda should try alone, and try before the king heard that Giles had obeyed his conscience in deciding to support the church in its quarrel with the king over the election of the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Having read, in Hereford Cathedral, the papal interdict suspending church services throughout the kingdom, Giles had prudently followed the example of the other bishops, who had defied the king and fled to France.

  The king was in council at Gloucester Castle, and it was with a profound feeling of foreboding that Matilda relinquished her mare to the esquire who ran forward to help her dismount and preceded William Ferrers and Adam into the great hall. John was, it appeared, busy and could or would not receive them at once, so, her heart pounding nervously, Matilda took the carved oak chair to which John’s chamberlain had shown her and sat down nervously, clutching her mantle around her and glancing up at Adam, who, resting an arm protectively on the back of the chair, stood close beside her. Ferrers, less in awe than the others, went off cheerfully in search of refreshment.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head back for a moment, feeling the heavily carved ornamental wood press into the back of her skull.

  Her courage, for the first time, was beginning to fail her. What if the king should refuse to grant her an audience? What if he refused her plea? What if he refused to see William and persevered with his plan to bring him, and thus the whole family with him, to ruin? She shivered a little in spite of the warm furs around her shoulders.

  They waited a long, long time in the great hall, watching the busy throng who were gathered there. From time to time men passed into the presence chamber to see the king and reappeared again, but no one came to call the de Braose party.

  Cold night had settled in outside. Through the ever-reopening outside door Matilda could see the swirling mist and the white haloes around the burning torches as men moved back and forth across her line of vision. More branches were heaped on the two huge fires, and aromatic smoke escaped now and then in puffs that hung beneath the high beams of the roof.

  And then the door opened again and a party of men were hurried out. The usher approached the chamberlain and whispered, and the man turned and began to walk purposefully in Matilda’s direction.

  She sat without moving, watching his stately progress down the hall, only the whitening of her knuckles, as her fingers clutched unconsciously together, showing the turmoil inside her.

  Then he was before her. He bowed. “His Grace will see the Lady of Hay,” he stated gravely. “He does not wish to see you, sir, nor you, my lord.” He nodded at Adam and Ferrers in turn and then, without looking to see if she followed, he slowly retraced his steps down the length of the great hall.

  ***

  John surveyed her for a long while without speaking and then, with a snap of his fingers, dismissed the clerks and attendants crowding the room and watching the tall, graceful woman who curtsied before her king.

  He waited until the door had closed behind the last bowing figure and then he leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I wonder if I can guess what brings the Lady Matilda to Gloucester?”

  She lowered her eyes. “Your Grace is probably aware of my predicament. I would not presume on our long friendship if I had not thought you might grant my request.” Glancing up, she saw something akin to amusement in his face and, taking courage, she smiled. “Please see William once more, Your Grace. Give him a chance to explain to you our temporary difficulties in raising so much money so fast. We will pay. But please, give us time, Your Grace. And please smile once again on William. He is so fond of you, so devoted to your service. You have broken his heart with your disfavor—” She broke off, seeing the black frown that, at the mention of William’s name, succeeded the look of humor.

  “William, my lady, is a fool,” he snapped. “He preens and crows under my favor and amasses fortunes and lordships all on credit, and then when I seek to realize some of my debts, he fawns and whines like a kicked dog.” He leaned forward in his chair, his blue eyes suddenly flashing. “God’s teeth, Matilda. I made your Sir William. From a petty border baron I raised him to one of the greatest in this land. And I can reduce him again as quickly.” He smashed his fist against the palm of his hand.

  Matilda shuddered.

  “Your husband, madam, was becoming too ambitious, too powerful,” he went on. “I smell treachery there.”

  Matilda gasped indignantly. “Your Grace, that’s not true! William is a loyal servant. And he is your friend.”

  Rising, John stepped off the low dais on which his chair was placed and, throwing on
e leg over the corner of the table, rested there, his arms folded.

  “He sought alliance with the rebellious lords of Ireland, my lady. Lords who have defied my justiciar there. They complained when he took Limerick from your son-in-law. Do you know why I took it?” He stared at her intently. “I took it because no dues have been received from William. The Earl Marshall was at court this winter pleading the cause of the Irish lords. You did not know, perhaps, that I have reinstated them now in their land in exchange for a pledge of loyalty. Yes, Walter de Lacy too. But my benevolence does not extend to your Sir William. He has driven me too far with his greed. God’s blood! He even covets an earldom!”

  Matilda bit her lip and then nodded reluctantly. “There is no treachery in that, Your Grace.”

  “Perhaps not.” John was thoughtful. “Nevertheless, I prefer men about me who serve me out of loyalty. I mistrust ambition.” He snorted. “A quality you did not display when you had it in your power to take a prince for a lover, though you did feel able to give your favors to a mere earl.” His eyes, deliberately insolent, slid up and down her body and she reddened violently.

  “I am an elderly matron now, sire. Too old, I think, for such adventures,” she stammered.

  John laughed again and, pushing himself up from the table, came and stood close to her. Slowly he raised his hand and touched her cheek. “You scarcely look a day older, my dear, for all your little Welsh princeling grandchildren.” He paused. “Is that what you have come for? Did you hope to seduce me into waiving your husband’s debts?” For a moment their eyes met. She saw the challenge in his gaze and something else—something that was veiled so quickly behind the hard, enigmatic stare that she wondered if she had glimpsed it at all.

  She took a step back, feeling the heat mount in her cheeks again. The interview was not going the way she had intended. “I came here to ask delay from Your Grace for the sake of the friendship you once had for us both, no more than that, sire,” she said with quiet dignity.

  John turned away abruptly. “Very well. I will give him another chance. For your sake. But I will require substantial proof of his intentions. Castles, hostages.” He spoke curtly.